The quality of the prediction of the atmospheric transport and dispersion of toxic, hazardous materials and pollutants strongly depends on the atmospheric forcing and in particular on the wind field. Especially in coastal regions, another important factor for correctly predicting the pollutant levels is the precise quantification of the sea aerosol particles formed predominantly by the action of the wind on the ocean surface. Furthermore, acting as a cloud condensation nuclei to form cloud drops, exchanging gases with the atmosphere and engaging other reactions, scattering lights and exchange moisture with the atmosphere, sea aerosol plays a fundamental role in the Earth's weather and climate regulation. Despite its importance, no continuous and long term monitoring of sea aerosol emissions is available and the measurements performed during dedicated campaigns are extremely scarce and spotted. As a consequence, sea aerosol trends are mainly predicted by simulations whose skill and precision rely on the atmospheric forcing fields used to drive models. The "Research on Energy Systems" (RSE S.p.A.) implemented the model system WRF-SMOKE-CAMx in order to simulate both concentration and deposition of pollutants in Italy. In particular, the WRF model was used for modeling the meteorological fields, the SMOKE model was selected to process the emission inventory and the CAMx was selected as the pollutant dispersion and chemical model to simulate different scenarios. The paper addresses an analysis of the performance of two WRF model versions (WRF-ARW 3.0 and WRF-ARW 3.2.1) in the Ligurian sea area carried out by comparing model outputs against observations at five different monitoring sites, four along the coast and one in the open ocean. The new parameterizations introduced in the 3.2.1 version of the WRF model contribute to improve the overall model performance although, for both the model releases, reproduction of the wind field shows criticisms due to the particularly complex orography of the Ligurian basin area. Nonetheless, the analysis evidences the feasibility of using the WRF model outputs as input meteorological fields to model the sea aerosol emissions.

Three years of 300 kHz Acoustic Current Doppler Profiler ancillary data collected in the Central Ligurian Sea are analyzed to investigate the zooplankton diel vertical migration in the upper thermocline. After a pre-processing aimed at avoiding the slant range attenuation, hourly volume backscattering strength time series were obtained. Despite the lack of concurrent net samples collection, different migration patterns were identified and their seasonal variability examined by means of time-frequency analysis. Relationships with environmental conditions and lunar phase were also evidenced.